Official site: https://www.iceblock.app/
The CNN article talks a bit more about privacy issues. This bit caught my eye:
It’s only available on iOS because Aaron says the app would have to collect information that could ultimately put users at risk to provide the same experience on Android.
I would like to see some details about this. Perhaps there’s a way to work around that problem, even if it meant publishing on F-Droid instead of Google Play.
“Apple keeps most of your location history on your device: the bits of information stored in the cloud are either end-to-end encrypted, meaning only you can decipher them, or anonymized. As such, the risk of having your location history compromised by a data breach, or by a request from law enforcement to Apple for this data, is greatly reduced.”
In this case they are anonymized. The service can tell what device is where but not what user that deviceID matches and those identifiers are rotated to make it harder to match that data up.
From: https://privacyinternational.org/guide-step/5537/guide-keeping-your-mobile-phones-location-history-private
That’s for Apple services specifically. If I build an iOS app, I can get geo coordinates.
But if the user doesn’t create an account and the deviceID rotates frequently, is there any way to tie those coordinates at a specific time to a specific person in a large enough geographical area and provide notifications (also provided via on device only services)? That’s what it seems like the developer has said Apple facilitates better.
The also said they will have a more detailed post up July 2nd about android on their site.
See also: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/01/iceblock-an-app-for-anonymously-reporting-ice-sightings-goes-viral-overnight-after-bondi-criticism/
The point they’re trying to make is that while Apple location collects anonymized data, the app itself could collect that data and send it off with a unique identifier. Like Strava except it’s spyware. It has location and internet permissions, and the App Store data privacy thing is self reported and not necessarily factual. We can’t know unless we dissect the app because it’s not open source. Right now it seems they’re not doing that, but nothing is stopping them.
Android’s Fused Location Provider, even though it’s provided by Google Play Services, works in the same way and is just as private as Apple’s location API. They are both on device with anonymized data sent back. So IDK what the devs are talking about. But I am interested in their blog post.
The post is up: https://www.iceblock.app/android
Turns out it’s about the notifications not the location, though it still indirectly is about location since the notifications are geographically specific.